


Goodbye Billy

by Ataleofterror



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Break Up, Canon Era, Love, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Post-Canon, fear of intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:40:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28919958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ataleofterror/pseuds/Ataleofterror
Summary: AU where everybody lives and returns home to England and Hickey is less of psycho.Billy thinks they can continue on land where they left off. Hickey thinks/knows otherwise. Their lives are just too different.
Relationships: William Gibson/Cornelius Hickey
Kudos: 8





	Goodbye Billy

**Author's Note:**

> These two break my heart and I can't stop thinking about them.

Goodbye Billy

The men are all heaving on deck as they approach, trying to spot their loved ones from afar. Billy sees his mother and sister, waving frantically. Cornelius sits back from the men on deck, smoking a cigarette. Billy didn’t ask, but instinctively knows there is no eager face among the crowd straining to identify him from the mass of bodies on board.  
Billy’s mother and sister finally see him as he and Hickey descend the gangway, their waves becoming even more frantic. He runs over to them, flinging his meagre bag of belongings on the ground. His mother embraces him, tears streaming down her face. “God bless us William, I never thought I would see you again,” she says, hugging him. 

“You’ve gotten thin!” she exclaims, squeezing his sides. How little she knows. 

“I’ve always been thin, mother,” Billy replies.

“Let him go mother or you’ll break him in half!” his sister Emily says, kissing Billy on the cheek and giving him a quick hug. 

Billy has his back turned to Cornelius and has momentarily forgotten him during his reunion with his family. The scene is repeated all over the dock. Men being reintroduced to babies who have become children, boys who have become men and girls who have become women. Among the happier scenes are sombre ones: the greeting party down a member or two from those who sent them off. Lieutenant Little walks by, swinging a small child in his arms, “my son!” he exclaims delightfully, throwing the child up in the air.  
All the while, Hickey leans against a crate, smoking, observing. Some men resemble their families so strongly he can tell exactly what they will look like when they’re old and grey, others resemble their family so little they could have been plucked at random from an orphanage. He observes Billy and his family. His mother is surprisingly small and stout; he must take after his father. His sister shares the same doe eyes, and is tall for a woman, straight up and down. Billy has his back to him. As his sister hugs him, eyes squeezed shut in delight, she suddenly opens them, staring Hickey straight in the face, her gaze singling him out amidst the chaos of the scene. 

“Who’s that man?” she asks.

“Who?” Billy asks, turning. 

“Oh,” he says as he realises who she is referring to, affecting a casual air.

Billy turns to Hickey, “I’d like to present to you my good friend Cornelius Hickey, without whom I wouldn’t have returned to you.” 

Hickey doesn’t move, momentarily looking like he would like to throttle Billy. As his mother and sister approach him, the charming smile Billy knows so well appears.

“Cornelius Hickey,” he says, and shakes both their hands. The moment becomes awkward.

“Hickey,” Emily says. “Is that Irish?”

“Originally,” Hickey says, elaborating no further. Billy is irritated. Hickey is never usually short of a word. He realises he has never seen him talk to a woman before. He is not rude, but distinctly uninterested. 

“Nice to meet you, I’d best be on my way,” he says, throwing his cigarette on the ground and his bag over his shoulder, not awaiting a response.  
Billy runs after him, “Cornelius, wait!”

Emily watches them closely. This man is not her brother’s first “good friend.” Once, when they were younger, she encountered Billy and his “good friend” the neighbour’s son naked from the waist down in the forest near their home. She imagines he has made many good friends on his travels on ships over the years. Emily never shared what she saw, she would never betray her brother like that. 

Billy uses his profession as an excuse when his mother nags him about getting married, but Emily suspects she knows the truth. “I don’t like that man,” their mother says, out of earshot, as Billy runs after Hickey. “He has a strange way about him. And no one to meet him. What kind of man doesn’t have someone waiting on the dock for him after four years, not even a friend from the pub?”

“Cornelius, wait! What are you doing, where are you going? Won’t you come with us to lunch? We’re going to celebrate.”

“Me, you, your sister and your mother, out to lunch? Come off it Billy. Besides, I don’t think your mother likes me very much,” Hickey gestures with head. Billy turns to look at his mother, who is indeed delivering a withering stare in Hickey’s direction. 

“Well, I’ll go with them and we can see each other afterward then. Are you staying in London?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Well, mother and Emily have booked rooms in a boarding house not so far away. Perhaps you could lodge with me for the night.”

Hickey laughs, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t you know it’s a sin to share a bed before you’re married?” he taunts, which Billy chooses to ignore.

“Well, I’ll have to go back home with mother and Emily to the village, but I can come back to London after a week, use finding work as some excuse,” Billy takes Cornelius’ hand, supplicating. 

“Careful Billy, eyes are watching,” he says, dropping his hand. 

“I’ll go with them now and meet you at the Whale and Anchor tonight,” Billy says with an air desperation.

Cornelius fixes him with a cold stare, “You don’t understand Billy. This is England. This is real life. This is dry land. We’re not on the ship anymore.”  
“You’re right, I don’t understand, why you’re being so damn obstinate.”

“Go home with your mother and your sister and back to the life you had before.” Hickey turns his back.

“I don’t want to go back to that life. I want to be with you. We can rent rooms, find work. Plenty of bachelors live together and no one passes any remark on them.”

“What kind of life would that be for you, looking over your shoulder every second? No life at all.”

“Don’t act the coward and pretend you’ve suddenly come over all selfless. If you walk away now, that’s on you and only you.”

“Understand this, Billy. My England is not yours. I don’t go for tea at the parsonage with my mother and sister, I don’t dance around the May Pole on the village green.”

“Is that really how you think I spend my life?”

“Think on this Billy,” Hickey says, pointing his finger at him. “We were both on the same ship, yes. But you had your own cabin, not an officer’s cabin, but still a cabin. You wore white gloves and a waistcoat. You had your own mirror and basin. A curtain for privacy.

I, meanwhile, slept on a layer of canvas suspended from the ceiling, in the same place that I ate, along with fifty other stinking men, filthy from a day’s work shovelling coal or engaged in other such filth-making tasks. Many of them could write no more than their own name, spidery and awkward like a child’s writing. Sharing a privy with men who would be more comfortable in a barn than around a dining table.”

“Your point being?”

“My point being, Billy, that we may inhabit the same country but we do not inhabit the same world. It’s foolish, and dangerous, to think otherwise.”

“You speak of me as if I were a lord instead of the son of a village schoolmaster. Our lives are not so different as you may imagine.”

“And that, Billy, is my point. You cannot imagine, nor should you. And that is why I am bidding you goodbye now.”

“And you’re ok with this?”

“I will be.”

“God, you always have to have an answer for everything, don’t you? Did I really mean that little to you?”

Hickey gives Billy a look he’s not sure how to interpret before turning his back a final time, walking ahead decisively.

“You’re a coward, Cornelius!” he shouts, not caring who hears him.

Billy doesn’t move. He can’t move. He can’t breathe.

Hickey looks over his shoulder, “Good luck Billy.”

Billy wants to run after him but realises there is no point. If Cornelius wants to disappear, he will.

He is rooted to the spot as he watches Hickey round the corner and disappear into the deluge of the crowd. His mind is blank and his mouth is dry.  
Emily has been watching the whole scene unfold. She can’t hear what they’re saying, but she reads their body language carefully. She rushes over to her brother, before their hobbling mother can reach him. 

“Come, brother,” she says, her hand on the side of his face. She stands on her toes and whispers in his ear, “I know your heart is breaking but I will take care of you. Come,” she grabs his hand. Billy looks at her with tears in his eyes and says nothing but nods his head gently, allowing himself to be led by her.

“Is it really that obvious?” he asks in a laconic, sarcastic tone Emily does not recognise as his.

“To none but me,” she whispers, as they walk back to their mother. 

Billy swallows his tears and fixes his face with a glazed smile as his mother links his arm. 

“Your friend is gone on his way?” she inquires dispassionately.

“Gone. Yes,” Billy says emptily.

“How happy I am to be united with my two darling children once again,” his mother exclaims, linking his arm. 

“Indeed,” Billy says.

His sister grabs his other hand in her own, rubbing his palm with her thumb. 

Billy imagines throwing off his mother and sister and running the streets like a madman after Cornelius. He can’t be that far. Although it feels like an eternity, in reality it can’t be more than three or four minutes since they parted.

But he knows in his heart that a man like Cornelius knows how to stay hidden, even in plain sight, and is likely already, at this very moment, lost amid the rookeries of east London, reinventing himself for his next act, one which does not have a role for Billy.

*  
Billy is aware that time has passed as he finds himself in bed in the lodging house that night. He is exhausted from maintaining such a pretence in front of his mother. He allows his candle to burn down to a nub and does not make any effort to replace it when it the wick burns out, smoky. He lies in the dark, eyes staring blindly at the same spot on the wall he has stared at for the previous several hours.

A gentle knock sounds at his door. His heart lifts for a moment, wildly imaging that Cornelius has changed his mind and somehow tracked him down. He lifts his head and is disappointed but not surprised when he sees his sister in her nightdress. 

“Mother is asleep, finally.” She tiptoes in and joins Billy in bed, like they did as children. She lies down next him and puts her arm around him. She can feel his bones. He accepts her embrace but says nothing.

“You loved him,” she says, a statement, not a question.

“Yes,” he says, quietly.

“I’m sorry, Billy,” is all she can think to say.

She feels his body heaving as he lets out smothered sobs, a silent grief she cannot begin comprehend.


End file.
